A serial rapist and murderer comes to Rev. Keith Schroeder apparently about to die of a brain tumor, swears the minister to secrecy, and then confesses his worst crime. Was it just to get it off his chest before he died? Well no. It seems another man, one Donte Drum, is on death row in Texas, and is about to be killed by lethal injection, and Mr. Travis Boyette would rather the wrong man not get fried for the crime. Imagine that, a serial rapist and murderer with something of an ethical pulse. And if you were this man’s minister, what would you do if he downloaded this story on you while you were sipping your coffee one morning in Topeka Kansas? Inquiring minds want to know.
Most of Grisham’s novels have one thing in common— a breakneck breathless pace with the tension in the novel not resolved until the very end. This particular novel is different in that the tension in the story is resolved a good bit before the end, and the denouement is long and important, especially from the ethical point of view (the book is some 418 pages– one of the longest of his recent novels).
Grisham has made no bones about it that he is a strong opponent of capital punishment. His one foray into non-fiction, The Innocent Man (reviewed some time ago on this blog) tells the tale of how innocent people wrongly lose their lives due to a fallible system, run by fallible humans egged on by fallible persons wanting revenge (calling it justice). The irony of course is that often Christians are those who scream loudest and longest for the death penalty, even though they know perfectly well they have needed a lot of forgiveness in their own lives, and in fact the God of the Bible says ‘vengeance should be left to me. I will repay.’
Grisham then explores in fiction the same territory he explored in fact in The Innocent Man and the story is both interesting and thought-provoking. In an accompanying post, I have put up an interview with Grisham when he wrote The Innocent Man. I agree with the man on this issue.
Back to this novel however. One of the issues this novel raises in a powerful way is what minister’s should do with confidential information that is of a life threatening sort. Should the minister even promise to keep things confidential? What does a minister do when he is trapped in a lesser of several evils situation, with no good choices?
My answer to that is rather straight forward: 1) know your hierarchy of ethical values (what is higher what is lower on the basis of your Biblical principles); 2) always favor the higher value over the lower one; 3) if forced to make a choice between two morally ambiguous acts, or even two clearly sinful acts (e.g. lying vs. allowing an innocent person to be executed by the State), choose the lesser of two evils. Note however, that evil doesn’t become good, just because its a better choice. It’s still a sin, and still should be repented of, after the fact. Which brings me to the issue of confession.
Of course we know the famous saying— confession is good for the soul. This is often true, and it may be said to be true in the case of Travis Boyette in Grisham’s novel. But confession, even public confession, as we have in due course in this novel, is not the same thing as actual repentance, nor should we expect it to immediately produce forgiveness. And indeed, in the Gospels, we see Jesus forgiving people without such a verbal or public confession, for example in Lk. 7.36-50.
One or the best features about ‘The Confession’ is that it seeks to deals with the tensions of a minister and his wife caused by the vocation of the minister. It deals with how problematic situations put real stress on a marriage, and it deals with what one does when your spouse doesn’t agree with your decision about how to deal with a hot potato like Travis Boyette’s confession. It also deals with what happens when your episcopal superior comes down on you for besmirching the name of your church through the action that you took with a felon. Sometimes a church leader may be more concerned with the public image of appearing to side with the criminal rather than the victim, when in fact the opposite is the case.
Another aspect of this novel which is intriguing is the interface between moral authority and legal authority, and how ministers can get in hot water when they cross the line. When is it ethical for a minister to act unlawfully for the sake of his Biblical principles? Is God’s Word the final moral arbiter in a minister’s life, or should the secular law take precedence? And what do you do when the law and the LAW in the Bible conflicts? Do you have the courage of your convictions, and if so are you prepared to accept the legal consequences of your actions? In this novel Reverend Keith is indeed prepared to do that, though it rightly frightens him. And this brings up a point many Christians don’t get. Sometimes your Christian principles can get you in legal hot water, and you need to understand in those circumstances what civil disobedience does and doesn’t mean, as opposed to being a revolutionary.
Civil disobedience is a practice in which you object so strongly on moral grounds to some law that while in general you think the law is good and should be obeyed and that Christians should be good citizens, you cannot in good conscience obey some particular law. So what do you do? You disobey the particular law, but to show your respect for the system and the right of the law to judge you, and so you submit to the punishment for disobeying the law. Reverend Keith Schroeder is my kind of minister, and the unfolding of his story when a crisis is forced upon him is both moving and telling.
I commend this novel to you if you have any interest at all in wrestling with the sort of moral issues ministers often unwillingly have to deal with. I will not spoil the plot for you, but will say— here is an excellent stocking stuffer and conversation starter for the Christmas season. If you really believe in ‘liberty and justice for all’ this book is for you.
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